The Gap into Madness: Chaos and Order (42 page)

“You’ve
all got it backward.” He sounded lethal and relaxed; master of himself as well
as of them. “
This
is what happens when the cops try to do their jobs.”

She
knew him too well: she knew what his expression meant. Without thought, without
taking so much as a second to wonder what in hell had gone wrong, she slapped
at the cleats on her stool, unclipping her belt so that she could move; so that
she could reach the zone implant control in her pocket.

Even
then she wasn’t fast enough. She’d suffered too much damage: her nerves and
muscles were slow. Nick pivoted against his handgrip, bringing up his leg in an
arc to kick at her head, and she could see that he wasn’t going to miss. His
boot came at her as if she were motionless; as if she were waiting for it.

But
Davies was quicker. He had his father’s reflexes; he’d been bred to adrenaline
and urgency. And he also knew Nick too well; knew him with her memories, her
pain. His fear was as swift as hers. Instinctively he flung his g-flask at Nick’s
face. With his other arm, he threw a block against Nick’s leg.

Because
he was anchored to his stool, he was able to stop the blow.

For the
same reason, the, impact slammed him onto the edge of the table. Morn thought
she heard a snapping sound from his arm or his ribs. Even though Nick was
weightless, his kick was charged with mass as well as inertia. And Davies’ mass
had nowhere to go.

The
g-flask caught Nick’s cheek and bounced away, leaving a round pale mark like a
stain on his flushed skin. Momentarily out of control, he rebounded from Davies’
block, tumbling for the far wall of the passage.

The
instant her belt came free, Morn flipped forward, using the table to somersault
her toward the foodvends; away from Nick.

Sib had
frozen for a second. Panic had that effect on him; incomprehension had that
effect. And for another second he made the mistake of scrabbling at the cleats
to detach his belt.

Then he
forgot about getting loose and wrenched his gun out of his pocket. His hand
clenched on the firing stud before Nick could recover from Davies’ block.

Before
Davies could duck out of the way —

But
Nick wasn’t alone. Angus drifted in the passage beside him, his toes barely
touching the deck, his face black with murder. Steadying himself on a handgrip,
he caught Nick’s recoil easily, steered Nick’s momentum aside as if the
movement were effortless.

In the
same motion he raised his hand toward Sib.

Almost
too quick to be seen, a thin streak of coherent light shot between his fingers.
Before Sib could finish squeezing the firing stud, Angus’ laser slagged a hole
through the centre of the handgun.

Yelping
in pain and shock — hurt by the heat rather than the laser itself — Sib flung
the useless gun away.

Oh,
shit!

Laser
fire? From his
hand?

Morn
couldn’t understand what she’d just seen, and didn’t try. Reacting in pure
pain, she snagged a grip on the nearest dispenser, cocked her legs against the
surface of a foodvend, and launched herself like a projectile at Angus.

For a
splinter of time that seemed to sear her brain, even though it was too short to
be measured, she stared straight into his eyes.

His
whole face was black with blood, as if hundreds of blood vessels had ruptured
at once, burst by the internal pressure of his heart. His eyes were as mad as
Nick’s; but they were insane with anguish, not glee; not triumph. Rictus
stretched his mouth back from his teeth as if he were screaming; yet he made no
sound. Nothing could get past the destructive pressure tearing through his
chest.

The
hand which had burned Sib’s gun swung to meet her.

Again
Davies was faster than she was. In that instant he came back off the edge of
the table. Still secured to his stool, and hampered by damage, he nevertheless
managed to hack his fist against Angus’ arm.

Too
fast for Davies to defend himself — too fast for Morn to see how he did it —
Angus recoiled into a blow which struck the side of Davies’ head with a
crushing sound, like rock being pulverised. Davies slammed onto the edge of the
table again.

This
time he didn’t get up.

The
blow swung Angus out of the way of Morn’s attack.

Out in
the passage, Nick had recovered control. Now he seemed to pour at the galley
like a breaking wave, ready to hammer down on Morn’s head.

Instead
of trying to hit Angus, she caught her fingers in the back of his shipsuit and
used his bulk to pull her into another somersault. With every gram of strength
and momentum she could focus, she drove her bootheels into Nick’s face.

The
impact knocked him nearly cartwheeling down the passage.

At the
same time it shoved her hard against Angus’ back.

Fighting
for her life, she made a desperate effort to heave herself off him.

Easily,
as if she’d used up her capacity to affect him, he caught her wrist in a grip
as hard as a C-clamp.

Too
late, much too late, Sib cried out, “
Morn!
” and grappled with the
attachments of his belt.

A
heartbeat later Mikka arrived.

She
must have heard the sounds of trouble outside her cabin and come as fast as she
could. Hurling herself along, she delivered a punch at Nick as he plunged past
her; but she didn’t pause to follow it. She was already committed to helping
Morn.

Her
brother floated behind her, directly in Nick’s path. As Nick careened toward
him, he raised his stun-prod.

Heavy
with muscle, Mikka drove into Angus’ arm.

Morn
slipped free as if he’d thrown her away.

Spinning
wildly, barely able to keep her head from colliding with the bulkheads, she
dashed for the bridge like a feather in a torrent.

Somewhere
behind her, she heard a cry that might have been pain; might have come from
Ciro. She heard a harsh grunt of effort; heard blows as loud as shots. But she
didn’t stop. Driven by fury and terror, she shoved and heaved and rolled
forward as fast as she could go. In panic she thought she could feel Angus’
fingers clutching for her, grabbing at her. Thrashing her arms and legs so that
she would be hard to catch, she flung herself along the passage until she
reached the companionway.

There
she could stop her mad tumble on the handrails; steady herself. Still she didn’t
pause or look back. From the support of the rails, she pitched into another
flip which carried her over the empty bridge stations almost headlong into the
bulkhead near the auxiliary engineering console.

Vector
looked up in shock. “Morn—?” Surprise seemed to take him by the throat, choking
him. He’d been concentrating too hard to hear anything. “What—?”

She
locked her fingers into a handgrip, pulled herself off the bulkhead, swung down
beside him.

His
blue eyes were stunned with fatigue and incomprehension; unable to speak, he
stared at her as if she were starting to mutate in front of him.

She had
no idea what had gone wrong, but she knew what it meant. Angus and Nick had
joined forces. And Angus could do things she’d never suspected —

“
Self-destruct!
”
she cried urgently; blazed at Vector like a gun. “Blow us up! Do it
now,
while you still can!”

“Morn?”
He gaped at her; hardly seemed to recognise her. “Morn?”

“God
damn
it!” He was too slow. “Let me at that board!”

Frantically
she shoved him aside so that she could take his place in front of the console.

Self-destruct.
Now or never. She would never get another chance. At any second Angus might
shoot her in the back with his impossible laser. Davies was already lost, and
she didn’t believe that Mikka and Sib could beat him. There was no other way to
stop him.

And yet
the bare idea brought up agony from the core of her heart, filled her head with
screams she didn’t know how to utter.

Self-destruct.

How
many times did she have to face the same horror before she finally succeeded at
killing herself?

“You
can’t!” Angus barked from the head of the companionway. “You can’t access those
functions. I’ve locked everything except Vector’s research.”

As soon
as he spoke, she knew he was telling the truth. Despite his exertions, he wasn’t
out of breath; didn’t seem to be in a hurry. He wasn’t afraid of anything she
could do.

“Give
it up,” he told her. “Don’t make me hurt you.”

She
wanted to howl and weep, beat her fists bloody on the edges of the console. He
was telling the truth: she couldn’t stop him this way. Nevertheless she had no
time for frustration; couldn’t afford to give vent to her agony and despair.
She needed them herself.

Still
clinging to her handgrip, she turned to face the man who had raped and
brutalised and now betrayed her.

Angus
hadn’t left the head of the companionway. He seemed to think that he’d already
won; that he didn’t need to approach her in order to master her. Yet his face
showed no triumph — and certainly no satisfaction. He was sweating so hard that
his skin resembled molten wax, and his teeth ground against each other as if he
were chewing pain. The congested anguish in his eyes made him look like a man
who knew what being raped meant.

“Christ!”
Vector breathed softly. “What went wrong? What happened?”

Angus
didn’t answer the engineer. His attention was focused exclusively on Morn. He
might have been trying to think of a way to plead with her.

There
was no pleading in his tone, however. Harshly he said, “Nick gave Ciro so much
stun he’s puking his guts out. Mikka and Davies are unconscious. And Sib looks
like he’s having some kind of seizure.”

Looming
out of the passage, Nick drifted to Angus’ side. With one hand he caught the
companionway railing to stop himself; in the other he held up the small
stun-prod which Milos Taverner had left aboard
Trumpet
. The spot on his
cheek where Davies’d struck him had turned a bright, mortal red, contrasting
strangely with the darkness of his scars.

“Not
anymore,” he announced, nearly chortling. “He’s puking, too. The air’s full of
it back there. When they recover, they’re going to have fun cleaning it all up.”

A sound
that might have been a laugh or a snarl burst between his teeth.

“Nobody’s
left to help you,” Angus told Morn. “Give up before I have to do something
worse.”

Vector
shifted his position as if he wanted to protest, then thought better of it.

“No,”
Morn panted. Now that she was motionless, she found that she could scarcely
breathe. Strain and fear cramped her lungs; she was only able to force out a
few words at a time. “I won’t. Put up. With any more of this.

“I
would rather be dead.”

Her
free hand slid into her pocket and brought out her zone implant control.
Wrapping her fingers over all the buttons, she put the black box behind her and
held it there; shielded it with her body so that Angus couldn’t fire his laser
at it without killing her first.

“Morn,”
Vector whispered in horror. “Don’t — I’ll help you somehow. They need me — they
want my research. I’ll stop working if they hurt you.”

She
ignored him.

So did
Nick and Angus. Instead Nick tensed, flashed a glare at Angus. “Why didn’t you
take that thing away from her? I told you to grab it.”

Angus
didn’t bother to answer. Sweat dripped away from his eyes like tears. His face
was livid with stress, as if he were strangling on his own tongue.

“Well,
stop
her,” Nick rasped. Without transition his mad glee had become fury. “That’s
an order. I want her alive. After what she’s done to me, I
want
her
alive.”

Angus
might have moved to obey. The distress in his gaze seemed to imply that he took
orders from Nick, even though he hated them. But Morn didn’t wait to find out.

“You
aren’t listening,” she retorted. “I haven’t got anything left. So there’s
nothing you can do to stop me. If you come” — somewhere she found the strength
to shout — “
one step
closer, I’m going to clench my fist. I’ll burn out
my brain before you get anywhere
near me!
”

“No!”
Vector croaked desperately.

Morn
glimpsed his movement out of the corner of her eye, but the warning came too
late. Anchoring his weightlessness against the auxiliary engineering console,
he hacked her across the side of her neck with the blade of his hand, then
grappled frantically for her zone implant control.

Ripped
it out of her grasp.

And turned.

Launching
his mass from the platform of the console, he slammed her black box against the
bulkhead; drove it onto the hard surface with the heel of his palm.

Blood
splashed from the impact as the box shattered into half a dozen sharp
fragments, shredding the skin of his hand. Squirming red globules stained the
bulkhead, swam through the air in all directions. The jolt seemed to shoot pain
through his arthritic joints.